The Phantom Chronicles BoxSet

by T. C. Edge

  Chloe’s heart tightened.

  “That’s heading in this direction!” she said, turning to Dax with widening eyes. “When was this taken?”

  “About fifteen or so minutes ago, just before I came to wake you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let you sleep for so long…”

  “Jesus, Dax!” breathed Chloe, realising she didn’t actually know the time. She looked at her watch, and saw that it was approaching midday. “Why the hell didn’t you wake me earlier! I should be gone by now!”

  Her thanks for his selfless aid was being swiftly overpowered by a sudden fear.

  “I suppose I imagined you to be quite safe here,” Dax retorted. “I’ve been monitoring the manhunt all night and nothing too concerning has crossed my path. No one seems to have a clue where you are.”

  “Well, except this Ragan Hunt!” said Chloe. “How could he know?”

  “I’m not sure. He must have gained access to the building, and probably your apartment. If he found a usable DNA sample he might be able to track you using it.”

  “Track me using my DNA? Is that possible?”

  “It’s becoming possible with new tech developments. He’d need to find a sample, confirm it as yours, and then hope to find trace elements in the atmosphere to follow. By the looks of things, he must have discovered something since he’s heading in this direction. He may lose the trail, or he may not. Either way, it’s best you leave immediately.”

  “I’ll say,” breathed Chloe. “Any advice on the best route out of here?”

  “Absolutely. In my line of work, it’s always a good idea to have options.”

  “I know all about that.”

  “Well, I’ve got a way out the back, which leads to a street a block or so away. It’ll be busy outside, which is a good thing. The more people, the more DNA interference. Agent Hunt’s scanner will need to search through all elements in order to track your unique signature. With more people around, it’ll take longer. Anyway, take this.”

  He grabbed a little package from beside one of his monitors, and handed it to Chloe.

  “What’s in here?”

  “A mini comms unit,” said Dax. “It’s on a secure line, so you can contact me during emergencies. If you need my help, dial in and it’ll go straight to me and no one else. It’s untraceable, so don’t worry about anyone listening in. There are also some replacement darts for your bracelet guns, a set of contact lenses with some useful settings like infrared and night-vision, and a couple of packs of nutrition tablets too. If you’re in a tight squeeze, they’ll keep you from going hungry for a while. One tablet a day is all you’ll need.”

  Chloe felt the early pulses of guilt for her recent outburst. Once again, she drew Dax into a hug, this one partially apologetic.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Don’t mention it, Chloe. Now, when you get outside onto the street, your best bet is to head straight east. Security will be tight, but they can’t have eyes everywhere. There should be plenty of holes for you to slip through. Once you’re beyond the boundary of LA, the heat should start to fade. But…I don’t need to tell you any of this. You know it all by now…”

  Chloe listened, subdued. She felt more lost than ever. It wasn’t that living in the pit had been pleasant. Far from it, in fact. It was more the simple reality of staying put for an extended period of time. For having some respite from the constant running and hiding, and the cursing of her fate that came with it.

  She’d grown tired of it, and now, after an extended break, was being forced to flee once more. She was rusty, and already felt drained of emotion, despite her long sleep and the undeserved aid provided by Dax.

  “And what about you?” she asked him. “What if this agent tracks me here and finds you?”

  Dax shook his head.

  “Don’t worry about me, Chloe. I can handle myself. Just get as far from here as you can, find somewhere to lay low for a while, and all this heat will quickly fade. These hunts for you get shorter each time. They know they’re never gonna catch you, sweetheart.”

  With a firm and supportive smile, Dax led her out of the room and down a short corridor to a store room. Moving aside a carpet, he unveiled a trapdoor. He pulled it up and climbed down, Chloe quickly following as Remus hovered around her. Dax flicked a switch, and the passage lit up ahead, dark and gloomy and extending beneath the building.

  “It doesn’t go far, just across the street and up into a small apartment. Don’t worry, it’s empty. Head through the apartment and you’ll come out into the lanes. It’ll be busy, and you’ll blend right in. Actually, hold on a second.”

  He quickly climbed the ladder back into the store room above, returning a few moments later. This time, he had a dark raincoat with him, that he draped over Chloe’s shoulders.

  “It’ll conceal your clothes. I’m afraid I don’t have any spare garments that will fit you. I’m sorry, I should have thought of that last night…”

  “Dax, you’ve done too much already. It’s OK. I’ll get some new ones as soon as I can. I know how to blend in and hide.”

  Dax took a final look at her.

  “Then I guess there’s nothing else to say. Except, goodbye and good lu…”

  His words were cut shot by a sudden commotion, spreading from above them, up through the parlour, and out towards the entrance. Voices were heard, followed by a couple of loud thuds.

  Dax’s eyes went straight for Chloe.

  “I think you’d better go,” he said.

  13

  Ragan had always hated LA.

  Every single time he’d been to this fetid, sprawling swamp of a city, he’d had the urge to leave immediately. It was far too vast for his liking, nothing but a fungus upon the earth, spreading off in all directions and calling home to so many lost souls.

  There were places of beauty and great wealth, of course, but much of it was now lived in by the great masses of the WSA, so many of them coming to live here to flee the almost constant state of war that had engulfed much of the continent.

  Nowhere in the Disunited States was safer than here. And yet nowhere was crime and vice so rampant either. The people came to flee the war, and yet so many found themselves caught up in criminal activity in one way or another. For some, crime was a matter of employment. For many more, it was an ever present threat to their wallets and lives. And though the sight of peacekeepers was so common, they rarely intervened in organised crime, corrupt as the city was.

  Ragan’s visits here had been rare, of course, given his work with the city’s great rival. New York had been home to Ragan for some time now, and though a large urban jungle itself, had managed to maintain a greater sense of order, despite the suffering it took during the Second Civil War.

  Once upon a time, perhaps, it was the more prominent city. These days, there was no doubt that LA wore the crown.

  Right now, he was moving through its deeply populated streets, heading for the central sectors. Space here was at a premium, and the place held a chaotic feel, its tangled net of lanes and alleys huddled in between the vast, towering skyscrapers above, and the deep earthscrapers below.

  Ragan thought back to old pictures of New York from many decades ago, and knew that once it held the most famous skyline of them all. It had been the first city in the world, in fact, to truly embrace these soaring structures, stretching skyward as if reaching for the heavens. Tourists would come from all over to visit the island of Manhattan, trailblazing the path for others to follow.

  Now, however, it wasn’t quite the same. Many of its greatest towers had seen severe punishment in the wars, and the once famous skyline had been overtaken by others. Among them was LA, greedy in its construction of gigantic towers and, in more recent times, the deep earthscrapers burrowed into the earth. Both remained prominent, and no more so than here in the city’s centre, where the streets were so haunted by grand constructions above and below.

  And between them, the narrow spaces formed, cluttered places where
a bustling way of life had taken hold. People lived and worked here in grubby shops and apartments, fashioning their little nests wherever they could. It was a symptom of the WSA’s power, its overabundant population. Too many were now coming to the city, refugees in their own country, filling the streets in their bid to start a new life in this, the safest place they could find.

  That was the appearance, but perhaps not the reality. The soaring crime made living here dangerous, and finding work wasn’t always easy. People would come in hope, and soon fade into depravation.

  And that’s what Ragan hated about it the most. LA was a city that turned good men cruel, a city that corrupted children. It may be more isolated from the wars beyond its borders, better protected by the natural features to the east, and the vast armies paid for by the wealthy government. But in reality, the city was sick. Life here held a veneer of joy and hope. In truth, so many were suffering.

  Ragan could see it now with his own eyes as he hurried through the streets, jostling with the crowd as the clock ticked past midday. He’d rushed quickly from the industrial districts to the south, pacing hard in a bid to keep hold of the trail.

  Given his nanobot augmentations, he’d been able to run fast and without stopping for some time, only slowing as the crowds swelled and the streets tightened. His scanner had worked feverishly as he went, sifting through the thousands of DNA signatures to track down the one belonging to Chloe Phantom.

  The initial trace element had turned out to be an eyelash, blinked or scratched off the girl as she escaped the previous night. It was a fortunate find, and had given Ragan a direction in which to travel. He’d managed to discover trace elements of sweat particles too, further providing him with a track to follow, guiding him towards the heart of this poisonous place.

  But, with the crowds thickening, his hunt had slowed, and the trail had begun to go cold.

  As he ventured on, slowing now to give his scanner more time to work, a beeping sounded in his right ear. He quickly reached up and pinched his earlobe, activating his communicator.

  “Hunt here,” he said.

  “Ragan, it’s Wexley. Give me an update.”

  “Update, sir, is that I’ve tracked Chloe’s DNA trail towards the city centre, but it’s beginning to cool. Too many damn people. I’m hoping you’ve got an update for me, though.”

  “Yes. Doc’s narrowed the search for forgers and fixers where you are. He’s loading the information to your info-lens now. Are you seeing it?”

  In front of Ragan’s right eye, a stream of information was now appearing, giving names and locations of various known criminal info-traffickers, forgers, scammers, and counterfeiters in the area. Ragan blinked his right eye three times in quick succession. Immediately, from his lens the information spread out as a hologram, allowing him to interact with the three-dimensional image as his eye acted as a projector, beaming the information out before him.

  He reached forward, little more than a foot in front of his eyes, and began manipulating the data with his hands, sifting through it. He recognised several names. With a few swipes, he brought up an image of a map, showing him where all the known criminals were located within the vicinity, each of them labelled by a blue dot. His own location was marked red.

  To passers by, it must have been something of a strange image seeing Ragan do his work, if not completely abnormal. Interactive and holographic contact lenses had begun to come into common use in recent years, though not likely around here. They were more popular among the wealthy, who would use them to read the news, be alerted to security updates, or even watch television programs and movies.

  Standing in the middle of the street, however, Ragan didn’t care who might be watching. He was oblivious to their staring eyes as he swiftly worked through the options, tapping on each blue dot and bringing up the relevant information for the known forgers and counterfeiters located nearby.

  As he did so, Commander Wexley was in his ear.

  “Anyone you recognise, Ragan?” he asked.

  “Several, yes,” said Ragan. “But none fit the profile. These men are not helpful to fugitives unless they’re getting paid an exorbitant amount of money, and as far as I know, Chloe Phantom had all her accounts frozen when her dad died.”

  “Correct,” said Wexley.

  “In that case, the only way for these men to profit from any interaction with Miss Phantom is to take her in for the reward.”

  “And perhaps that’s what one of them has done?” proposed Wexley. “They may be holding her to use in a bidding war. I can assure you, if someone guarantees they have Chloe Phantom alive and well in their possession, they’ll get a hell of a lot more than the wanted posters say. As you know full well, there are bounty hunters and private trackers out there who have been commissioned for much higher rates.”

  “I’m aware, sir,” said Ragan pointedly. “But none of that makes sense either. I think we’re dealing with someone Chloe’s worked with before, someone she trusts. They’re not just going to take her in and betray her.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It’s amazing what a rising reward will do for someone’s morals. A man’s personal code of conduct can be easily decimated, Ragan…”

  As Commander Wexley began issuing a short speech on the weakness of the human spirit in the face of great reward, Ragan continued to check through the various criminals lit up on the map. In his periphery, he noticed a few people gathering around him, intrigued by what he was doing. It was a drawback of using holographic projection lenses like this. A man might be happily reading the news, only to find a few info-scavengers reading along behind him.

  Of course, given the nature of Ragan’s work, this wasn’t acceptable. He was about to either shoo the vultures away, or else retreat to somewhere more private, when one particularly burly man pointed at a nearby blue dot.

  “You interested in tattoos, are you?” he asked.

  Ragan blinked quickly three times, drawing the holographic image of the map back into the lens. He turned on the man.

  “Excuse me?”

  Though Ragan was well over six feet tall himself, he was still rather dwarfed by the sizeable pile of meat before him. The guy must have had at least a few inches on him vertically, and probably several foot from side to side. He was colossal, his arms granted a generous amount of both muscle and fat, two great trunks sprouting from the ragged edges of a stained white vest.

  Ragan’s attention went straight for those arms, not least for their size but the mesmerising array of living tattoos that were moving about upon their surface. It was quite trendy now, or so Ragan had been told, to ink up your skin with these living designs. Personally, he had little interest in such disfigurement.

  As he looked at the tats, the big man spoke again.

  “Like the ink, huh?” he boomed. “Good place for it just round the corner. I’m not selling or nothin’. I just really like the place.” He looked a little sheepish all of a sudden. Ragan imagined that he probably was selling, and that he worked for the very parlour under discussion.

  “So, it’s a tattoo parlour, is it?” asked Ragan. “The blue marker you pointed out?”

  “Oh yeah, the best in LA for living tats. Ink-Alive it’s called. Can’t miss it, just around the corner there, down the lane to the left.”

  “And who runs it?”

  Ragan, as he asked the question, was perusing the information upon his right lens. This time, he was doing so privately, and without the image being projected out before him.

  “You know what, don’t know his full name to be honest. Just goes by Dax around here.”

  “Dax, huh,” said Ragan, nodding.

  “Oh yeah, funny fellow really. Not the type you’d expect to run a tat parlour like that. Wears glasses, you see. Wiry little man. He doesn’t do the art himself, of course. Hires people. He’s a good boss that Dax…”

  The burly man stopped himself short.

  “And here was me thinking you said you didn’t work for the place?�
� asked Ragan accusingly. “Sounds like you are selling, after all…”

  The man shook his head fiercely.

  “Don’t matter to me. You look too clean for a tat anyway, wouldn’t suit you,” he said, somewhat defensively. “We don’t need pretty boys and pretty girls wasting our time.”

  The man looked set to leave, before Ragan grabbed his meaty arm, turning him back.

  “Pretty girls?” he asked firmly.

  The big man stopped, nodding.

  “Yeah, we get girls in sometimes who don’t belong. Wanna rebel against daddy, or whatever. Only last night a girl came in. Though, actually, that was different…”

  “Different how?” asked Ragan immediately.

  “Er, well, she knew the boss,” said the man. “I thought she was wasting my time, but the boss came out and told us to let her pass.”

  “So you’re security?”

  “Well, at night, yeah. Daytime I’m like, you know, a living billboard. People like to talk about my tats, so I drum up business for the boss.”

  The guy had clearly given up the pretence now, happily admitting his role.

  “And this girl last night,” said Ragan, his voice growing ever more intense. “Tell me what she looked like.”

  “Um, pretty face, pale skin. Black hair, I think, though she was wearing a cap. Blue eyes. Thin…definitely too skinny for me.”

  As the man spoke, Ragan was already turning and moving off quickly down the street. He’d heard quite enough.

  “Hey, where are you going?” called the man, as if worried he’d said too much. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  Ragan didn’t answer. He was setting into a gallop now, reaching to his earlobe once more. He had hardly realised that he’d clearly cut Commander Wexley off as he conducted his brief investigation.

  The line crackled, before Wexley’s voice rose from the static.

  “Now you’d better have a good excuse for cutting me…”